Bob Pickardhttp://bobpickard.com
PR leader and communications counselSun, 21 Aug 2016 12:28:18 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6.1A quarter century of lessons learned working in the PR worldhttp://bobpickard.com/a-quarter-century-of-lessons-learned-working-in-the-public-relations-world/
http://bobpickard.com/a-quarter-century-of-lessons-learned-working-in-the-public-relations-world/#commentsSun, 07 Aug 2016 22:43:47 +0000http://bobpickard.com/?p=679Summarizing my professional journey, this presentation explains a signature ‘lesson learned’ for every single one of the 25+ years of my PR career working in five countries (USA, Japan, Canada, Korea and Singapore) helping clients communicate around the world. It was primarily written for younger people who are now starting out in the public relations profession:

In a busy PR life, it’s hard to pick just one lesson per year, and indeed if this presentation were listing all my many mistakes (and I have made some spectacular ones), then it would be a much longer piece.

Actually, I’m still learning every day and feel fortunate to be building my career in public relations — at such a great time to be alive in our industry — alongside so many wonderful people.

I’m planning to be a lifelong PR, doing what I do for decades to come.

I have a new project on the boil and look forward to sharing news of it soon…

]]>http://bobpickard.com/a-quarter-century-of-lessons-learned-working-in-the-public-relations-world/feed/2Things I notice being back in Canada after living overseashttp://bobpickard.com/things-i-notice-being-back-in-canada-after-living-overseas/
http://bobpickard.com/things-i-notice-being-back-in-canada-after-living-overseas/#commentsThu, 23 Jun 2016 20:44:51 +0000http://bobpickard.com/?p=673

It was a year ago this week that I returned to my native Toronto after spending the better part of my career (so far) working overseas. Except for visiting or taking career breaks, I hadn’t really lived in the country since 1995.

My more than two decades in the global public relations trade has been spent building PR consulting businesses in the United States, Japan, South Korea and most recently Singapore.

Living in other countries means you can view the strengths and weaknesses of your own country through a more objective lens from afar. After 20 years away, I can also see how Canada has changed or stayed the same. I guess it’s true that when you live something every day you don’t notice the small changes as they happen compared to how they loom larger after a longer period of time (think ‘before and after’ picture).

Here, in no particular order (and with my subjectivity freely admitted), are some of the things that I have noticed since returning home after such a long journey of so many years:

Incumbency

The ‘talking heads’ holding court on domestic television and the bigwigs in the maple leaf lounge at the airport with their twinkling Order of Canada lapel pins are, for the most part, the same folks who were strutting around many years ago. There hasn’t been much elite turnover and there are relatively few fresh faces at the most senior levels of the ruling class.

Plus ça change

Indeed, in many cases, the top person in a particular segment or company or vertical is the same grandee who seems to have been there for eons. For example, in my own industry of public relations, the senior bosses and best firms remain essentially the same (give or take), and one can reasonably wonder what this means about the Canadian trade’s dynamism.

Echo chamber

Many of the Canadian leadership community live in an ‘echo chamber’ that becomes very conspicuous on social media networks. Community sizes even for the famous here are often relatively compact compared to other markets, and many seem to share a large overlap of a few hundred of the same connections in common.

International affairs

Awareness about the shifting balance of power in the world is surprisingly limited in this country. The connectivity of Canadian business with the Asia Pacific region is shockingly low. Many companies neither seek nor value Asian experience in their most senior executives. Overall ignorance about Asia (compared to Europe and of course America) is jaw-droppingly widespread.

On the other side of the Pacific, the West is perceived as being in terminal decline and bets are being placed on China. Very few Canadians seem to be familiar with, or care about, the extent to which a communist-ruled PRC is poised to overtake the United States sooner than people think, with all that means for the global power structure.

The other day some zealous canvassers knocked on the door at my house in Toronto and asked me to sign an anti-TPP petition, describing it as some conspiracy of American multinationals. When I told them that I support TPP because I want to see Asia prosper within a more free Western economic sphere (rather than under the hegemonic Chinese mercantilism that is surely an unattractive alternative), I drew blank expressions.

Diversity class

The multicultural demographic diversity of Canada has become more pronounced. I think that’s a change for the better, and our cities are alive with international influences that make them far more interesting places than they were before. However, unlike say Singapore, it’s not like there’s a large community of leaders from around the world who have deliberately decided to base their companies and locate their families in Toronto (for example) with business mandates that address global or regional affairs.

Expat diaspora

Canada is one of those countries that have produced diasporas of people who go global in search of larger opportunities and/or new adventures. However, with so few truly international Canadian companies that operate around the world, relatively few expats from this country serve in Canadian-owned organizations overseas. There are millions of Canadians working outside of the country – many of them all-stars who are part of a ‘brain drain’ – but very few do so in a way that directly benefits the country’s interests.

Americanization

The culture has changed: when I went overseas, there was no major play for ‘Black Friday’ sales in Canadian malls around American Thanksgiving, but now that’s normal. I also notice that the Canadian English language has become more American-sounding, with Z now ‘zee’ rather than ‘zed’ and ‘prōcess’ is more widely pronounced as ‘prawcess’. These are just two small snippets; there are many examples of this trend.

Branch plant-ism

In the corporate sector there is palpably a resigned acceptance to how often budgets and decisions are controlled from mighty U.S. head offices. It’s no surprise that a lot of senior managers end-up working for American companies where they can paint on a bigger global canvas and have a greater sense of control in the work that they do. Among the leaders who build their careers in Canada, I suspect their psychological efficacy could be higher. Even though there is such an abundance of creative people here, I see so many blatant examples of ‘copycat’ behaviour or ‘me too’ thinking wherein Canadian enterprises emulate what they see larger companies pioneer in America (concepts, slogans, product names, thought leadership studies, you name it!).

Group identities

Like America, in Canada there is now a much more pronounced focus on identities that transcend the individual, such as race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. The media in North America is constantly filled with dividing line content about categories, communities and group grievances. For a part of the world that is supposedly more individualistic than Asia, this focus on collective designations seems somewhat ironic. I already miss Singapore’s unifying emphasis on meritocracy.

Public institutions

Perhaps it’s nostalgia for an era that only exists in my selective memory, but I remember when people across society took pride in public institutions like the transit or education systems that enjoyed participation and support across demographic divides. Now it’s like ‘public’ means for poorer (or newer) Canadians while the affluent send their kids to private schools and seldom take public transport. In Toronto the subway is embarrassingly dilapidated and the crumbling schools have a repair backlog that’s larger than the annual school board budget.

The environment

Canadian cities are still pretty clean (compared to American cities). However – and maybe I was spoiled living in immaculate Japan – I think the civic hygiene here is not what it was, reading the graffiti, seeing the litter or recoiling in the dirty public lavatories (if you can find one…public washrooms are so rare in Toronto). On the other hand, it remains such a pleasure to drink water from the tap and breathe fresh outdoor air in this country compared to any Asian city and most American ones. In some ways, I think the quality of the natural urban environment has improved in Canada over the years (e.g. I remember summer smog in Toronto but that’s become very rare indeed, to be celebrated). Weeds and a riot of plant life grows in parks and along unruly roadsides which are no longer controlled by manmade means such as pesticides. In Singapore, when I saw all the well manicured and orderly lawns and gardens, I remembered that’s the way they used to look in Canada.

Climate change

Meanwhile – and this is admirable – even though Canada is a cold oil-rich country which will supposedly do better with climate change compared to other countries, conscious concern about global warming is more acute here than in the other places where I have been fortunate to live. Canadians seem relatively well informed and properly alerted on this topic by a responsibly concerned media.

Media relations

But Canada is not such a large market, so its smaller-scale media industries have been hit particularly hard by the disruptive impact of technology. Thank goodness for the CBC, which still offers a more balanced and substantial take on the news than I’ve typically seen from other countries’ public broadcasters. In general I think the Canadian media takes its responsibilities pretty seriously, with our journalists usually more successful than American or often Asian ones in reporting balanced news. Our hard-won freedom of speech is on more impressive display in Canadian outlets compared to the more corporate manner we see in the news down south or relative to the controlled press cartels on the other side of the Pacific.

Democratic politics

The divisive U.S.-style tactics of the former Canadian government notwithstanding, our political system remains relatively vibrant. Like a lot of other Western countries, in Canada there has been a serious slide in the quality of elected leaders. Short-termism is endemic in public affairs and there could be a lot more planning and thinking about the long-term future. However, even at its most fiercely partisan, the political dialogue seems more civil here compared to many countries and citizen participation at election time remains reasonably popular.

Complacency continues

We Canadians are blessed with an amazing standard of living compared to almost anywhere, but after so many years in hard-working Asia where education is prized above all, I worry that we sometimes we take our prosperity too much for granted and feel somehow entitled to our national wealth. I have even speculated in a fanciful way what would happen to the relative position of each country if you moved the 50 million people of South Korea into Canada (blessed with abundant natural resources), and relocated the 36 million people of Canada into the landmass of South Korea (with very few natural resources).

Grasping for global

A lot of Canadians have social media profiles stating that while they live in say Ottawa or Calgary, they have a “global perspective” or regard themselves as “citizens of the world.” I like that mindset. Our outward international outlook (regardless of what can be our petty regional parochialisms) is a tremendous asset. Some have argued – and I find this attractive – that Canada is the world’s first post-modern country.

While Canada is a successful and wonderful endeavour with a strong national brand overseas, our positives are only fuzzily favourable, and we need to be a bit cleverer than coming up with self-congratulatory slogans like “the world needs more Canada.”

Actually, I can’t help but think we need to stop being smug and learn more lessons from Asia in particular. Canadians can only do that if we discard dated delusions and update stale stereotypes about the world and stop seeing so much of ourselves refracted through an American prism.

These are my rough draft thoughts on this subject for now, although I will probably edit this post more when time allows.

Justin Trudeau and Donald Trump are among the world’s hottest political properties these days, and the fortunes of both have soared through their gifted use of social media.

Indeed, I think that they are now arguably North America’s most digitally savvy politicians, particularly on Twitter where both men come alive for all to see.

It is obvious that Trudeau and Trump understand social media has changed the rules of the game. Both are masters of tuning into the emotional wavelength of their supporters. Both will often lead their respective countries’ news cycles through their posts.

So they share some things in common, but the more I think about it, the more I believe these two guys represent opposite ends of the social media style spectrum, which reveals how diametrically different they are as leaders.

There is no doubt who the alpha male is on social media when Trump blasts away howitzer-like on Twitter. His feed is a must-watch space for everyone following the car-crash spectacle of American presidential politics. He is the master rabble-rouser and king of the outrageous. Plus you can tell it is him doing the Tweeting more often than not.

Trudeau is strikingly different. It’s facile to observe that he is politically correct (as opposed to Trump), but he does earnestly endeavour to be the impeccable social media exemplar, making everyone feel important and included while advancing his polished point of view.

There is actually a lengthy list of communications contrasts between these two leaders. Here is a very subjective rough inventory (in no particular order with as little prejudice as possible), which has easily come to mind:

Despite some parallels, Trudeau and Trump are photographic negatives of each other in terms of their digital leadership communication.

It’s hard to imagine more ‘social’ leaders than these two, even with their divergent political and personality polarities.

My own view (and I admit my bias as a Canadian) is that Trudeau’s style is ideal and his approach preferable. However, he is almost too ‘perfect’ and he can also come across as somewhat syrupy.

Trump I find alarming and shocking, but compelling and inescapable nonetheless.

In some quarters, it has become almost tediously fashionable to bash Twitter. Some say it is downright doomed, and so-called ‘purists’ have been fretting about rumoured changes to the service.

Twitter does seem to have plateaued with respect to new user acquisition, and as a suffering TWTR shareholder, I wish that weren’t so. But wearing my other hat as an avid Twitter user, I’m not convinced that go-go growth to satisfy the stock markets is everything it’s cracked up to be. I think it’s more important to consider the character and quality of the Twitter experience, both of which are far from perfect, but they are unique and important — especially in the public affairs and public relations spheres.

In this, my ninth year with an account, I have actually never seen Twitter more powerful than it is today as the place to be for what’s happening now. At least where I live my professional life (primarily in the ‘Anglosphere’ world of marketing and media), Twitter has never been more consequential and essential.

To start with, Twitter is a channel of choice for leaders who have something to say. Most politicians are there, and so are most celebrities from a wide range of domains. More and more journalists are active (for a variety of reasons, from crowdsourcing story ideas to job anxiety and the need to be ‘seen’ in a social media frame). Just about every public relations professional worth their salt has a Twitter account. As for CEOs, they do seem more comfortable on carefully controlled company websites, but the select few who use Twitter to communicate continuously and orchestrate the connectivity and emotions of their communities are awarded the coveted ‘social CEO’ reputation badge.

I find a leader’s mastery of Twitter the real ‘acid test’ of whether or not they are a ‘social’ leader. Even in the PR world, where Twitter is the industry’s medium of record, some of the most senior agency leaders seem to do pretty well as publishers on LinkedIn (where they can basically blog as they have been doing for years), but then when it comes to Facebook, they look more awkward and on Twitter they struggle and languish. Fortunately their employees ‘get it’ and they are using Twitter with aplomb for their own thought leadership, as a contact manager, as a trending news and media monitoring system, and as a complete crisis communications suite for their clients.

I have also noticed the addressing anchor which Twitter provides information workers. As fax numbers on business cards have been going the way of the dodo bird, the @name moniker has often taken its place over the years. Then there is Google, with searchable Tweets. Of course, when you want to find out about somebody, their Twitter page is among the first results that appear at the top of the page when you search for their name.

These observations are all fine and good (if unoriginal in some cases), but nowhere is Twitter’s continuing importance more apparent than its role driving the news cycle. It used to be that newspapers were at the top of the food chain, where broadcast media would follow their lead and interview the people they already quoted. Then 24×7 cable TV news was where people turned for breaking news. While many still do, often it’s with one eye on Twitter, which is usually the first with pictures and videos and the inside dope from the front lines of what’s really going on. TV news can often be too ‘corporate’ and overproduced, too polished and slick. Twitter stands in contrast as a ferment of authentic voices from diverse sources and divergent polarities on the spectrum.

The 2016 American presidential race offers a compelling case study. Every campaign’s present moment is being lived on Twitter, and there is a real-time cross-pollenization of ideas and developments with the mainstream media. For political junkies like me, Twitter has become a de rigeur part of the election experience. If you believe in democracy, then there is something exhilarating about voters and candidates and journalists interacting around events and issues plus sharing major milestone moments together.

Because a career in PR is so much like working on political campaigns, maybe that helps explain Twitter’s appeal as a tool of my trade. Instead of party leaders, we have CEOs. Rather than pledges and policies, we have corporate missions and visions. We are not championing candidates every few years, but we are promoting products and services where every day seems like election day, and Twitter is tailor-made for that kind of dynamic.

Yes, Facebook looms larger all the time and Instagram is getting more popular. Messaging apps like WeChat are going places. Snapchat and Vine have a lot to offer. There is a role for all these platforms, and I’m on all of them. But I have a special fondness for Twitter and I feel enough of a stakeholder in its continued success to spend a few minutes writing this personal take.

]]>http://bobpickard.com/the-pr-power-of-twitter/feed/1My media day with Donald Trumphttp://bobpickard.com/my-media-day-with-donald-trump/
http://bobpickard.com/my-media-day-with-donald-trump/#commentsTue, 27 Oct 2015 18:34:47 +0000http://bobpickard.com/?p=650As he is now contending for the U.S. Presidency, just for fun I would like to recall my time with past client Donald Trump during 2001 when he was in Canada to announce his future real estate plans for Toronto. It’s a long time ago, but working with a born publicist like him is not the kind of thing that’s easily forgotten (and I made sure of it, too, by keeping pictures and videos from the big day). My job was to work with his organization for weeks beforehand to manage every minute of his time across media contexts, and to personally accompany Mr. Trump as he met the media and other stakeholder constituencies.

It’s been my honor to provide PR services for very senior leaders, including for titans like Bill Gates and George Soros. Over the years, I’ve been asked many times by fellow PR practitioners what it is like to work with such influential people. I’ve consistently answered that the most important thing to remember is that even though they are world famous, these folks are human beings just like the rest of us and they seem to enjoy working with PR professionals who realize that as well. There’s nothing such ‘captains of industry’ seem to dislike more than nervous handlers who act in awe of their celebrity. They want to proceed from one planned scenario to the next with ease and confidence. They want to follow a PR leader, not feel as if they themselves need to guide a follower (especially in unfamiliar territory surrounded by media frenzy, which most places are for such people).

There are a lot of clients out there – especially middle-management – who ‘lord it over’ the PR people and seem to think that they know everything. Some might assume that billionaires act that way writ large. But I have found the reverse to be true. You learn very quickly that such people probably became so fabulously successful in the first place because they maintained open minds with continuous learning. They also ‘get’ the fact that they wouldn’t be shelling out oodles of money for professional services like public relations unless they felt that some value is being added.

This video shows the publicity results of the Trump experience:

I once heard that any good PR person should always keep out of the picture, but with so many media around, and being the handler, that is basically impossible.

For much of their careers, PR professionals work hard to earn engagement with stakeholders such as media in order to generate positive media coverage. Pitching and placing publicity is often an uphill struggle, with calls to journalists that often go unreturned and rejection a constant fact of life. Just earning the coverage – any coverage – is often the objective, with concern for the content a secondary priority amid the general relief that the story appeared somewhere.

This dynamic suddenly changes when the PR pro becomes the designated media contact for a famous person. Then the underlying worry isn’t that coverage won’t appear; it’s fear that the wrong kind will. With saturation media play already a given, then strategy, framing and messaging become key. Nowadays how stories migrate cross-platform via the accelerant of social media is one of the most crucial calculations.

There are more media requests than there is billionaire time in town to accommodate them, and so it is the media who then need to deal with rejection as outlets and opportunities are carefully selected. On one level, it felt strangely exhilarating to help decide who would get to interview Donald Trump or Bill Gates in Toronto (or George Soros in Seoul), but rather than mete out to others the rudeness I had endured from a small minority of journos in past, I took great pains when I was in such a position of unexpected authority to return all calls and express sincere appreciation for the media interest.

Although I don’t support Donald Trump’s politics, and even though he might not recall me now, I remember him well from 2001 and respected him as a first-class client. I was surprised by that at the time, because when I was preparing for the assignment, I asked a friend of mine in Manhattan — who is CEO of a global PR firm — what he had heard about Trump. His two-word answer was a blunt assessment: “Total A**hole!” So I was braced for the worst, but I have to say that Trump was among the best project clients I have ever worked with. He was courteous and well mannered, evidenced intellectual curiosity, sought messaging guidance, respected the local context, acted like a true professional, and he went with the flow.

The only thing out of the ordinary I noticed was how he did not shake hands, a peculiar preference I thought.

This picture shows me at the far right, after getting out of Trump’s limo and leading him through a frenzy of probably fifty cameras of every kind — one of my most exciting days as a PR counsellor for senior leaders.

]]>http://bobpickard.com/my-media-day-with-donald-trump/feed/2Communicating with social media to make corruption obsoletehttp://bobpickard.com/communicating-with-social-media-to-make-corruption-obsolete/
http://bobpickard.com/communicating-with-social-media-to-make-corruption-obsolete/#respondTue, 12 May 2015 12:41:37 +0000http://bobpickard.com/?p=646“Communicating with social media to make corruption obsolete: applying the technology of transparent times to inspire informed citizens” is the theme of this presentation which I delivered at Hong Kong today to the 2015 Symposium of the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC).

This wasn’t my first time speaking at ICAC; I also addressed their 2011 meeting. Hong Kong is a respected jurisdiction when it comes to combating corruption, and there are many lessons to learn from their experience at this excellent event which attracts hundreds of experts in the field from around the world. I was particularly honoured to sit at the head table next to Commissioner Simon Peh:

Together with Commissioner Simon Peh at Hong Kong

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http://bobpickard.com/communicating-with-social-media-to-make-corruption-obsolete/feed/0Learning to master constant change with EQhttp://bobpickard.com/master-change-eq/
http://bobpickard.com/master-change-eq/#respondMon, 11 May 2015 12:56:46 +0000http://bobpickard.com/?p=643I wrote some very brief comments for The Business Times of Singapore concerning the skills professional communicators will need in the future to become the best they can be. The 150-word piece is as follows:

Throughout my career, I’ve been very interested in continuous learning and mastering new skills. Ever since doing PR for the publisher of the first scientific measurement tool for emotional intelligence (EQ) in the United States (when I lived there in the late 1990s), I’ve been a big believer in it and have used various EQ resources in staff development and employee recruitment in North America and North Asia. It’s been said that while IQ might help earn a job offer, it is EQ which determines the extent and speed of one’s ascent in the organization. While IQ is thought to be a ‘fixed’ measure of intelligence, EQ is known to be dynamic and subject to continuous improvement through the self-awareness that comes with testing and training.

On April 23rd, I was honoured to be on Channel NewsAsia TV talking about the social media significance of YouTube’s 10th anniversary. I was interviewed live at the anchor desk by the splendid Julie Yoo (the on-screen lady behind me in this photo). Julie is from Korea – where I used to live during the last decade – and before the interview, we traded notes about how YouTube provided not only a platform for the global launch of the artist PSY (whose ‘Gangnam Style’ remains the most-watched video in history at 2.3 billion views and counting), but also for K-pop in general. Indeed, Korea’s ‘soft power’ as a confident exporter of its culture was buttressed in a way that would have been unthinkable prior to the advent of social media. I’ve been on YouTube for a long time and have a channel although it is relatively inactive compared to my other social media accounts (copyright restrictions on my past media interviews prevent more frequent posting).

Channel News Asia

]]>‘On the record’ for free speechhttp://bobpickard.com/on-the-record-for-free-speech/
http://bobpickard.com/on-the-record-for-free-speech/#respondFri, 17 Apr 2015 09:47:27 +0000http://bobpickard.com/?p=637Lately I’ve noticed how few are the full-throated defenders of democratic rights and a free press. Sometimes it seems that GDP has become the be-all and end-all measuring stick of a country’s development which trumps all other considerations. The sentiment in some markets goes something like this: “as long as the economy keeps growing, we’ll accept limits on expression.” Or maybe not question what I think is the flawed assumption that there is a somehow a positive correlation between restricting free speech and driving economic growth.

That’s the broader context of my outlook concerning what happened this week, when I was approached by journalist Emily Tan (interim editor of PRWeek Asia) to speak about Malaysia’s new ‘sedition’ laws. My own view is that during these transparent times when social technology is ascendant, I think the emphasis should be on communication rather than control, where we start with listening rather than legislation.

Anyway, Emily explained to me that many agency leaders refused to go ‘on the record’ concerning this controversial topic. That motivated me to say something as a named source for her story; she chose to quote me thus:

“I actually don’t believe this legislation will have much of an impact on corporate communications behaviour in Malaysia,” said Bob Pickard, chairman Asia-Pacific of Huntsworth. “The market already has a reputation necessitating calculated restraint in public relations and media relations.”

The new laws, Pickard added, may however adversely impact the nation’s marketing industry. “Our craft is at its best when freedom of expression trumps even well-meaning efforts which may have the consequence of stifling creativity or squelching insights and, in so doing, holding back the development of a country’s marketing services industry. My best communications counsel for both clients and governments is to proactively engage the online public as a source of new ideas to be openly shared.”

The reluctance of communications industry leaders to stand up and be counted when our profession faces free speech constraints is not ideal. We are, after all, arguably the world’s most influential information workers. I have also noticed a lack of robust public advocacy when the journalism trade is threatened, or when reporters themselves are intimidated through various muzzling maneuvers.

Not all topics require a comment every single time from industry big-wigs. But I do think our top people should step up to the plate on major issues (including ones like climate change which I have blogged about before wearing my corporate communicator hat). That means less running for cover when opportunities arise to speak about the freedom of expression which is our oxygen in public relations.

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http://bobpickard.com/on-the-record-for-free-speech/feed/0CCTV News interview on Chinese companies going globalhttp://bobpickard.com/cctv-news-interview-on-chinese-companies-going-global/
http://bobpickard.com/cctv-news-interview-on-chinese-companies-going-global/#respondWed, 01 Apr 2015 08:39:22 +0000http://bobpickard.com/?p=629There are now 95 Chinese companies on the FORTUNE 500 list, but only a handful of these are internationally renowned brands. In a social media age, it is critically important that this new generation of global MNCs become world famous for the positive things they stand for in the first place, rather than become infamous first through negative mistakes. Appearing March 19th on China Central Television, I shared such sentiments on the CCTV News‘World Insight’ live panel discussion programme hosted by Tian Wei.

Doing these media encounters is enjoyable and interesting, but for those of us in the PR business, the pressure is on because we so often advise clients how to perform well in interviews, to be credible with them we absolutely must follow our own counsel in doing them ourselves!